OpenBSD/FreeBSD is also good for servers. Gentoo and Slackware are also pretty stable too.

Quote: Original post by QzarBaron
Gentoo and Slackware are also pretty stable too.

I wouldn't recommend either of these to some one who is just starting out with Linux.

I use Server Optimized Linux (SoL, great acro.!) at work...it's an awesome distro, IMO.

link

Thank you all for your input. Is there a good site with a capability rating chart for each Linux version?

Quote: Original post by smiley4
Thank you all for your input. Is there a good site with a capability rating chart for each Linux version?

Distrowatch

My personal preference goes to Debian for

1) a kick-ass package management system
2) amazingly large selection of packages
3) stability and security
4) its completely free! Built in true-Linux fashion with an open source team rather than a corporation behind it

Don't know how good Debian has proven itself to be a server, but it has proven to be an irreplacable desktop OS for me.

Quote: Original post by smiley4
Ok, I guess I'm going to have to get another version of Linux, since I'm losing my bid on E-bay. Unless you can tell me another place where I can get SuSE 9 Enterprise Edition.

Why the Enterprise Edition? IMHO the FTP-install has everything needed for a server.

If you want easy configuration (YaST) and security updates then go with SuSE. If you are prepared to tweak and tinker a little then try Debian or Slackware (of course SuSE can be tweaked as well).

Installing a recent version of Debian might be problematic at the moment though. I've used another Debian-based distro's CD as a starting point and updated everything via official Debian apt-get sources after installation.

Quote: Original post by mrhollowIf you want to stress test the machine, write a perl (Or your favorite language) script that connect to your web server as many times as it can and downloads a web page. Do this from as many computers as you can. That server should be able to handle at least one thousand connections a minute (And probably a lot more), provided that the connections are downloads of simple web pages.

Alternatively you could use

ab

(Apache Bench) ;)